"Not a football crowd," Jon Stewart said after making an NFL joke at the beginning of Tuesday night's Daily Show. But his audience is familiar with the recent events in Ferguson, Missouri, and the "hands up, don't shoot" gesture by some of the St. Louis Rams at the beginning of Sunday's football game. The St. Louis County Police Association strongly objected to the gesture and asked (in vain) that the players be punished.
"So, the St. Louis police association is angry and outraged to have been caught in this hail of gestures, and feels the community won't get past this tragic pantomime unless someone is held accountable," he said in mock disbelief. "That's the angle they're going with." And when the police claimed that the Rams' chief operating officer apologized, when he said he didn't apologize, Stewart dropped the snark hammer: "Isn't it interesting how witness testimony is so unreliable?"
Stewart followed his cop-union critique with a chat with Larry Wilmore, who's replacing Stephen Colbert next year as host of The Nightly Show — get it? — about race and the riots. Watch below to see Wilmore shrug off pundits who say Ferguson isn't about race, and then compare racism to alcoholism, a condition that needs to be acknowledged before it is managed. --Peter Weber
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